RBI data localization deadline unlikely to be extended

New Delhi: The government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are not in favour of extending the deadline to store payments data locally, a senior government official said, effectively ending all speculation and lobbying by multinational companies.

The government and RBI also do not favour allowing data mirroring by payments firms as an alternative to only storing data locally, the official added on condition of anonymity.

The central bank has mandated that all payment firms, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Paypal, should store their India-related data locally.

Google and WhatsApp were also mandated to store data locally for their payments-related businesses. The deadline for submission of compliance reports by these firms ended on Monday, 15 October.

“All system providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. This data should include the full end-to-end transaction details/information collected/carried/processed as part of the message/payment instruction,” RBI said in its 6 April circular.

Though more than 60 companies have complied with the RBI directive, some of the big global entities operating in India had sought relaxation from the central bank.

Along with an extension of deadline, they had suggested mirroring of data wherein they store India-related data both within India, as well as in their global servers.

After the central bank refused to yield, they approached the Union government seeking a relaxation.

Last week, finance minister Arun Jaitley met RBI deputy governor B.P. Kanungo, economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, financial services secretary Rajiv Kumar and IT secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney to discuss the representations made by the global financial technology companies.

Among the global firms, WhatsApp was the first to officially comply with these norms. Last week, WhatsApp said that it has built a system that stores payment-related data locally in India.